Jennifer disappointed us. She was dishonest and greedy. Working with her caused us a huge amount of…read morestress and aggravation. Though she showed initiative in selling our condo, her primary motivation was to maximize her own profits, not her client's. We deserved better in an agent. I cannot, in good conscience, recommend her.
We hired her to sell our condo in Charlestown. We wanted to renovate the kitchen and bathroom before we listed it. For this part, she did really help us. She helped us pick out tile, countertop, and paint colors. She went with us to a few stores and spent some time with us. This is where the good parts end. Once she listed our condo, all went downhill.
First off, in our agreement, she wrote that she would share "up to 2.5%" of the commission with the buying agent. For the listing itself, she offered the buyers agent only 2.0% and hoped we wouldn't notice. She wrote "up to 2.5%" in the document so that legally she could list it for whatever she wanted and misleed us. This may have cost us a lot. Buyers agents do not want to show their clients 2% listings because it cuts into their margins. I only found this out after we accepted an offer and another agent told us that they don't like working with Jennifer because all of her properties get listed as 2%. When we confronted her, she would deflect or not respond at all. She would not tell us why she listed our condo at 2% without telling us.
Worse even, she did not disclose to us that she was serving as a dual agent, representing the buyer as well as us, the seller. Again, she found a legal loophole saying that since she told the buyer that she was our agent, she didn't have to tell us that they were unrepresented and therefore she would get all 5% of the commission.
She showed our condo prior to our first open house and presented an offer to us with a very tight deadline of 3 pm the same day, giving us only 2 hours to decide. If we accepted, we would cancel the open house. She told us it's a good offer and if we don't accept, it is possible we may not get an offer on the first two weeks which would stigmatize the property and leave us selling at a steep discount. What she conveniently left out was that she also represented the buyers. She specifically did not tell us that they were unrepresented, despite the fact that she was talking to them for 3 days. Usually the first question an agent asks a potential buyer is "who is your agent." She claimed she didn't know they were unrepresented until 3 days later when she met them in person. It was only after we accepted the offer, when I asked her who their buying agent was. She wouldn't answer at first. I pressed her again. And she told us they didn't have one and she wrote up the offer. We are left wondering if she specifically pressured us because this deal was good for her, doubling her profits or whether she really acted in our best interest.
She could have set a time when offers are due after the open house so that we had a chance to review all offers. She never gave us the option. Also, she promised in our initial agreement, that she would share a detailed marketing plan with us. We saw no evidence of marketing whatsoever. When we asked about it, her response was "you just need to let me do my job."
After we accepted an offer on our condo, where she was dealing with us and our buyer, things went downhill. She dodged all our calls and pretended to be busy all day every day when she did respond and would hang up abruptly. If we were lucky to get her on the phone, she would talk at us and filibuster - telling us how she negotiated a great deal for us, that it's her right to serve both of us. At times, she became hostile and condescending. She'd ask us why it matters to us? It matters because it's a massive conflict of interest.
There were other things that went downhill from there, but the bottom line is real estate transactions are expensive and stressful. The primary job of an agent is to represent their client's best interest NOT their own, and to reduce stress NOT aggravate it. Transparency is the number one ethical obligation. Jennifer was not transparent nor ethical. She told us, to our face, that she would not act as a dual agent. She wrote she'd provide "up to 2.5% split with the buyers agent." She ended up lying about both through legal loopholes. Even worse, when we brought these issues up, she turned hostile and would avoid talking to us. The entire transaction was extremely stressful and caused stress in our personal lives.
